That Boy Builds Bonfires
by Tozette
Summary: Maybe they're all terrorists and criminals, but not a one of them is so broken that he cannot yet form bonds. [Experimental. One-shot. Pairing is Hidan/Deidara. Some references to self harm, etc.,]


It starts, perhaps predictably, with a burning temple.

"You're gonna go to hell for burning all those priests," Hidan drawls. He doesn't really sound all that upset about it. His voice says he might even be smiling; if he is, it's not a nice smile. (Hidan does not have nice smiles.)

"Like I care," Deidara grunts, and he ignores him. He doesn't need Hidan's commentary. Seeing the other pair here was basically a coincidence - it's not like they're needed on this mission anyway. Kakuzu doesn't comment. He rarely talks at all, in Deidara's experience; he's just a shadow looming out of the darkness, all burning eyes and oppressive tension.

The smoke unfurls into a plume that bursts upon the sky. If he stares hard, Deidara can almost see the moment when wood turns to ash, devoured by fire.

It's _beautiful_.

"It's not bad, I guess. Heathen fuckers had it coming, anyway."

It takes Deidara a second to realise he's said it aloud. He doesn't take it back - would never take it back; rarely, in fact, takes back anything he says.

"Who doesn't?" Kakuzu snorts, and then stalks away - he's muttering something about a waste of resources and why the hell Deidara has to attract so much attention all the time, as though any of that really mattered to Deidara.

Deidara wonders though, briefly but with real curiosity: Who _doesn't_ have it coming?

He thinks about that cynicism for a while after that. Their mission is very nearly an insult to his artistic skills but a starving artist doesn't turn down a commission. It passes, quick and effortless and without a hitch.

In the meantime, Deidara concludes that Kakuzu is cynical as hell.

To be fair, he didn't really need to be a genius to work that one out - even though he actually _is_ pretty damn clever, if he does say so himself (and he does). What people deserve and what they get, though -

Deidara makes six clay spiders, heavy-bodied, spindly-legged, ungainly things. He blows them up outside the compound in a fit of unusual consideration for his companions. They're mediocre, artistically speaking, but they satisfy him on some level nonetheless.

There's something almost soothing about the inevitability of it all: he makes them, they creep away with all the stealth and grace of their natural counterparts. A flicker of chakra, a soft effortful grunt - _boom_.

Deidara sighs gently into the mid-morning air and tilts his head back to watch the white trail of smoke blossom overhead.

"You're gonna attract attention doing that," Hidan predicts. Deidara doesn't flinch - he knew he was there. Stealth isn't really Hidan's strong point.

Deidara knows all of his strong points, all of his weak points, all of the information he could possibly gather about him. It's a reflex. Maybe Hidan doesn't have it - maybe he just gets to hurl himself carelessly forward, safe inside his comfortable bubble of relative immortality.

For the rest of them, there's tactical planning.

Not a moment goes by in which Deidara manages to avoid thinking of some new method of mutilation, some new way to incapacitate and maim, to get enough distance for his primary skill set to be of some use to him.

Every step Hidan takes coming closer is one in which something calculating and predatory uncoils behind Deidara's eyes, somewhere deep in his brain. He flexes his fingers without thinking about it.

Hidan catches the movement.

Deidara is unsurprised to see him smile.

"What do you care, hm?" Deidara wonders, one hand chomping down on another mouthful of clay. "If somebody comes to investigate, isn't that just more for you to sacrifice?"

Hidan's smile grows. It's not a nice smile (Deidara was right about Hidan's smiles), but it is a genuine one.

Sasori and Kakuzu aren't precisely thrilled when the next explosion is large enough to bring three civilians running, but to be fair neither is really shocked by this turn of events, either.

* * *

><p>Deidara has never really watched Hidan performing one of his stupid rituals before. Sure, he's heard Kakuzu bitching about them, definitely, so he knows what they actually entail, but he's never really seen it.<p>

It's... strange.

Deidara is familiar with thoughts of death. He's planned his own eventual suicide in careful, attentive detail, and most days he looks forward to his immolation in a blaze of power and chakra, hot streaming winds and fleshy debris and bright light, fierce and beautiful and devastating - oh _yes_. Most days he looks forward to it with a kind of hungry restlessness.

Hidan's ritual death is almost... quiet.

Hidan is never quiet, so that seems strange.

The only loud noises are the fears of his victims, really. For the rest, Hidan mumbles prayers inside the symbol of his strange god. His skin is black and white, patterned like some garish skeleton. It's absurd, but Deidara finds he can't quite look away when he watches the shift and roll of hard muscles. (They are hard, too, and easily noticed. Hidan is a taijutsu-type, mostly. Deidara thinks it shows.)

There's praying, of course there is, and Hidan carefully slicing his own skin up: he doesn't flinch at the little spikes of pain and beads of drawn blood, although his breath comes faster and Deidara can see his pulse leaping under his skin. Once he does give a heaved, shuddering sigh. It's like the bloodletting releases something inside of him, some valve Deidara hasn't noticed. Pressure dissipates.

He slumps down, loose-limbed and relaxed. His vulnerability is astonishing, but Deidara is attentive enough to know it's not for him and it's not for Hidan's sobbing sacrifices.

Hidan presses the tip of his pike to his chest, right above the sternum. It would be easier, Deidara thinks, to go in beneath the ribs - it would require less strength, kill faster. He doubts Hidan would appreciate his opinion.

There is this long, effortful push of the pike through skin, through bone - a sucking sound, a hideous crack. Hidan's breath comes hard and rattling. He rolls his head back and gasps, all gleaming dark skin and sweat-slick hair. Fascination casts its spell and Deidara cannot drag his eyes away from the clench and unclench of Hidan's trembling muscles.

He can _see it,_ when Hidan dies. His eyes roll back into his skull and he makes a low helpless moan, a dragged-out sound. His muscles shudder, his breathing stills.

Deidara blinks.

He is dead, then. Really dead.

So are his sacrifices, of course, their cries long since silenced.

But the difference is this: they don't wake.

Hidan, on the other hand, blinks his eyes open and exhales long and slow and shaking. His muscles relax entirely and he stays there, staring straight ahead, eyes glazed and breathing deep and slow.

The muscles in his belly relax, and then down his thighs. Deidara's mouth goes oddly dry at the movement, although why he couldn't say. Hidan pulls the pike away with an organic, sucking sort of noise. Blood spills and pools across his chest.

He makes a dull, exhausted, satisfied sort of sound, and -

_Oh_, thinks Deidara.

He hopes Jashin appreciates the gift, really.

* * *

><p>After that, it becomes astonishingly obvious, although Deidara suspects Hidan doesn't notice. The others do.<p>

Maybe they're all terrorists and criminals, maybe their ability to empathise with most people is just - broken. For Deidara that quality was damaged by war, and he's made an art out of the rest; Hidan cut his own humanity away: a thing sacrificed in ecstacy to an uncaring god. But all of them, regrettably, retain a core of aching humanity. Not a one of them is so broken that he cannot yet form bonds.

(Sasori, Deidara thinks, is probably the closest. Or Orochimaru, perhaps. After all, he left, and doesn't that mean something?)

Deidara doesn't even care, not really. He indulges in empathy. He makes deep connections, full of passions and feeling. He wants to feel the overwhelming undertow of each brutal emotion when those bonds crumble.

(They always do. It's just a matter of time. Danna can say what he wants: _nothing_ is eternal.)

Hidan is... in his way, Hidan is one of those things. He follows him with his eyes and his mind, finds himself thinking of him casually, almost fondly -

Fondly, perhaps, is reserved for when Hidan isn't actually _there_, because who on earth could feel fond toward him when actually talking to him?

- and in ways that should be dangerous. Would Hidan like this thing? Would he want this event to occur? Would he force this confrontation, or leave as Sasori wants them to?

And then, inevitably: would he want Deidara?

Probably not, he thinks, licking sweat off his own palm with his own hand. It isn't a self-pitying thought. Deidara has seen the ecstacy and pleasure with which Hidan gives himself up to his god.

He doubts infidelity's in his nature.

Still, Deidara finds he's waiting for that last push, the moment Hidan realises; when watching and sniping turns to shoving and biting. He isn't sure when - or if - Hidan's going to catch on. Catching on, after all, isn't really Hidan's jam.

He decides, after some thinking, that it doesn't matter

Hidan holds his attention. For now.

That's something.

It's pleasant, even, because it gives him something to think about in the long winter nights when his own hands press hungry, sloppy kisses down his belly. He thinks of hard muscles, arched, the soft, too-satisfied grunt Hidan makes when the pike is finally buried all the way through.

(Deidara walks his fingers between his thighs. Tongues lick. He sighs, and hears Hidan's whimper on his mouth. He licks his lips.)

He doesn't even like Hidan, not really. The man irritates the hell out of him: loud, abrasive, opinionated. There's no space for anybody else when Hidan is in the room. It's irritating. Deidara feels, sometimes, like everything that idiot says grates against his skin.

To be fair, though, Hidan isn't the worst of them. He's just the loudest.

Deidara isn't sure he likes anybody in this stupid organisation, to be honest, but he has targets for his beautiful works of art and the others' vicious reputations to help protect him from international pressure, and he's learned to take what he can get and give nothing back. He'll go along with it, he thinks.

Right up until he doesn't anymore.

(And then there'll be fire and rubble and no one else left to blame, as usual.)


End file.
